


Into the Unknown

by Kira_Dattei



Series: The Old Guard Whumptober 2020 [15]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Comfort, Established Relationship, Immortal Husbands Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, M/M, Not Really any Whump, Post-Canon, Whumptober 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-15
Updated: 2020-11-15
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:53:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27568576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kira_Dattei/pseuds/Kira_Dattei
Summary: What Kozak did to Joe and Nicky was messed up and still affects them weeks after.Prompt: Science Gone Wrong
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Series: The Old Guard Whumptober 2020 [15]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1994617
Comments: 2
Kudos: 90





	Into the Unknown

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not a whump writer so I can't promise a huge amount of whump in all of these. I just picked the prompt from each day that actually sparked an idea and ran with it.  
> I'm mostly using these as a way to get a feel for the characters and I simply love the relationships given in canon and wanted to explore them.  
> Joe is the lucky whumpee for most of these because I just love him.
> 
> These are all going to be one-shots and they are as connected as you want them to be so you’re good to just read one and not worry about missing anything.

Joe’s hands clenching into Nicky’s shirt at his back woke Nicky up, his own hand twitching toward the gun under his pillow but he caught himself quickly enough.

Joe still wasn’t sleeping as he usually did. In the three weeks since Merrick’s lab, Joe would fall asleep curled around Nicky as was normal for them for centuries by now. But at some point in the night, he’d pull his arms in, pinning them between their bodies, almost like his body was trying to counter being strapped down and displayed on that table by being as compact as possible.

That alone kept waking Nicky up, the position different enough that it brought him awake. But then it was also familiar enough to Joe’s signal to Nicky that he was awake if they were startled awake that Nicky kept on waking up and looking for the threat that he’d missed that had woken Joe up.

It wasn’t a threat, though. Just nightmares.

Nicky had his fair share of nightmares from the lab, everything that happened giving them all plenty of subconscious fodder. But the worst had seemed to pass for Nicky, his dreams still unsettling but not any worse than the more sensitive missions they took on.

Joe was taking longer to work through his demons, which wasn’t actually surprising to Nicky. His love, as verbose as he was about most things, internalized his deepest struggles and only allowed Nicky to see how deeply he was troubled. And he usually only opened up like that when it was just the two of them.

But after everything that had happened with Merrick, Andy’s newfound vulnerability, Booker, and their responsibility to Nile though that was mostly positive as she was proving to be a delightful addition to their family, Joe and Nicky hadn’t even considered parting, even for a short time.

Nicky allowed the thought that they may need to, if only just for a few days. Approaching things as they had so far wasn’t working for his love.

Andy would understand. She wouldn’t even give them shit for it. She knew them too well, knew that they only asked for time alone if they really needed it since both he and Joe enjoyed the company of them all together more than solitude.

He’d been waiting to see if Joe relaxed again but he just kept clenching at Nicky’s back and Nicky knew this wasn’t going to pass. He rose up as much as he could with Joe still holding onto his shirt. He reached behind him to get a hand on Joe’s arm and then he ran his hand up and down Joe’s forearm soothingly. Joe eventually relaxed his grip enough that Nicky could work his shirt from Joe’s hand. He had to be careful of this part, not wanting to startle Joe who would come awake swinging and then would feel bad when he inevitably struck Nicky.

Nicky sat up once both hands fell from his shirt and he then turned to face Joe, his love already curling back in on himself even further without Nicky’s body there to keep him from going too far. Hating seeing Joe like this, Nicky reached for his shoulder and gave a gentle shake.

“Joe, wake up,” he called out.

Joe turned away from him quickly and Nicky curled his hand around the back of Joe’s head to keep him from going too far as he was already pretty close to the wall.

“Yusuf,” Nicky repeated with another shake, Joe trying to roll away from him but he didn’t allow it, knowing that it would help Joe wake up. Joe responded best to touch rather than sound while asleep.

Joe’s hand suddenly shot out in front of him as he gasped violently and Nicky slipped to the side to avoid being struck in the face. But that was the indication that Joe had woken up, his hands drawing back into him quickly and grabbing onto Nicky’s forearm, pulling at it in an attempt to dislodge it. Nicky waited for Joe wake up enough to realize it was him, hating the panic in deep brown eyes.

It took a few seconds until the grip on Nicky’s arm softened and Joe suddenly rushed forward, pressing his face into Nicky’s stomach, his arms wrapping securely around Nicky’s back. He was shaking slightly, just barely enough for Nicky to feel the motion.

Nicky returned one hand to the back of Joe’s head, combing his fingers soothingly through thick hair, easing out any knots, his other hand running up and down Joe’s spine.

Joe didn’t cry. His breathing was choppy but Nicky knew that if Joe hadn’t woken up crying, his dreams hadn’t been enough to push him that far.

Again, Joe buried what truly bothered him.

Nicky waited his love out, waited for his arms to loosen around him, waited for him to turn his face so that he rested his cheek against Nicky’s stomach instead of hiding his face, waited for him to shift his body to lay more on his side than in the certainly uncomfortable crouch he’d been in. Those were the indicators that told Nicky he would speak about it. If he didn’t want to talk now, he would have moved to rest his ear over Nicky’s heart and lose himself to the sound. Nights like that were among the few that Nicky slept with his back toward the entry point of the room as his love’s needs were more important.

He shifted his position as well, just a little to be more comfortable for however long this would take.

“You would think after enough time we would run out of nightmares. Or at least not be so bothered by them,” Joe said, sounding perturbed and Nicky gave a soft smile.

“That would come with the day where we should die,” Nicky replied. They’d had this conversation before and it was a matter they were in complete agreement on. “The things we are capable of are horrific. If we no longer feel for what we do, we are no better than the people we choose to remove from the world.”

Joe hummed absently. “We’ve dealt with this before. Why does this time feel so much worse?”

Joe was beating himself up for needing more time to accept what happened, Nicky knew. He wouldn’t yet call Joe out on that or he might actually cause a fight between them. They had both had conversations over the past few weeks that were just a bit off their normal, just more proof of how much this had affected them.

“With all that has happened, there are plenty that you and I haven’t dealt with before. We’ve never seen the death of one of ours. And none of us, not even Andy, have seen the betrayal of one of ours.”

Nicky had to fight himself to not allow his rage at Booker to get in the way of this time with Joe. His love’s most prominent feelings towards their outcast brother were more varied than Nicky’s now. Nicky was simply enraged and would likely be for many years. There was a reason he had made the highest demand for Booker’s exile. He knew he would eventually be able to dismiss his wrath and it would very likely be before the century was finished, but for now he knew if he saw Booker, he would kill him at least as many times as he had watched Joe die strapped to that table.

“Except that’s not what’s bothering me,” Joe admitted, interrupting Nicky’s thoughts.

Then it was what happened while strapped to the table that haunted Joe now.

“Nile apologized a few days ago,” Joe continued, apparently lost in thought. “She said she was certain she hadn’t killed Kozak.”

“What brought it up?” The topic of the experiments done on them had mostly been avoided around Nile. They had told Andy all the details when she had asked because she was Andy and they told her what she wanted to know, always had.

“She was talking with Copley about if there were any loose ends we needed to follow up on. Though I’m sure she was planning on taking care of it herself to spare us having to face it again.” Joe breathed out a soft laugh. “She is too kind and I don’t want to see that be lost in her.”

“Me neither.”

“She apologized because she didn’t know who Kozak was when she’d hit her. She told me if she’d known, she would have killed her.”

“We failed to put a bullet in her as well so does Nile really expect us to blame her?”

“I think she’s giving us too much leeway because we were the ones cut up. She’s too young to know how it was an oversight we’re old enough to know better than make.”

“Nothing about that was clean and we are ultimately only human. We had plenty else distracting us.”

Joe moved his hand to Nicky’s thigh and flicked him, Nicky flinching away to amuse his love. “You’re too old to make an excuse like that for us.” He let out a weary sigh as he settled back against Nicky. “It wasn’t the first time people have tried to find a way to take this from us so why was it so much worse this time?”

“I don’t know, Yusuf.”

“I blame modern medicine,” Joe suddenly declared, his tone shifting in a way that said he was trying to dismiss it. “How is it that advancements in medicine and the understanding of how the body works means they’ve just become better at tearing us apart?”

Nicky’s arms tightened around Joe at the reminder of just how much Joe had endured.

Kozak had her process, a list of samples to take from them. She had gone through her list with Joe first and had only just begun to work through it with Nicky when Andy and Booker had been brought in. But her testing of their limits had been on Joe. She had waited for him to revive every single time taking a sample had killed him. She had obviously altered her approach when she started in on Nicky, starting with the less invasive samples that were less likely to kill him. After all, she’d obviously been of the opinion that there was some difference between the samples being taken from them while dead rather than alive.

She had been dangerously misguided in a manner they had seen before. Nicky had been speaking honestly when he’d called out her hypocrisy. None of her ideas had been novel, selfish and self-serving as they had all been. She could claim she was in it for the benefit of others all she wanted but all Nicky could see was her hungry gaze on Joe’s skin as it had healed. And what Nicky had said to her was her only chance in Nicky’s eyes to realize what she was really doing, whether she would actually listen to the ones who had lived with their “gift”. Failing that had proven that she wasn’t willing to see them as anything but experiments. They were never people to her.

“I blame Kozak,” Nicky declared after a short silence. “She called herself a doctor but we have killed many for doing less.”

Joe leaned back and looked up to Nicky, observing him carefully before giving him a smile. “You’re still angry with her.”

Nicky huffed back. “I would kill her as many times as she cut into you.”

“I know. I’d just remind you that it wouldn’t change what happened.”

“No, but I would feel more at ease knowing she was gone from this world where she couldn’t know about you and want to use you for her own gain.”

Joe rolled his eyes before laying his head back down against Nicky. “Us, Nicolo. It wasn’t about me but what _we_ are. I just happened to be first. I’d hate to see you misplace your anger or give her more than she’s worth.”

Nicky shrugged, knowing Joe would feel the motion. “You know how I feel towards those who hurt you. You feel the same. Don’t ask me not to feel this towards her, not when I listened to you scream and watched you stop breathing over and over as she took pieces from you.”

“I’m not telling you to hold her accountable because we will see this settled. I’m simply reminding you that none of us would have been spared her cutting away as us. She would have gotten worse as she realized what she was looking for was wasted effort.”

Nicky knew that much, had watched people lose their patience plenty of times as they discovered their victims wouldn’t actually stop healing and it wasn’t something they controlled or could share. Kozak would have come to that same realization and when that happened, she would have become more dangerous. It was inevitable.

“How long should we wait?” Nicky asked, knowing Joe would understand he was referring to them going after Kozak. With what she knew about them, it was too dangerous to let her remain alive.

“Only as long as it takes for Copley to find her. It’s time he proved his worth. We won’t make Nile finish our battles.”

“You realize she will likely find out and come anyway, right?”

Joe gave Nicky a brief squeeze before relaxing his grip once more. “As I said, she is too kind.”

“We may be seeing more of her vengeful or protective side in this case,” Nicky added with a small smile on their newest sister’s account. It wasn’t likely that Nile would let them keep her out of this since she apparently had the thought that it was her fault Kozak was still alive. “I wouldn’t be opposed to someone else being willing to watch out for you. You certainly don’t do it enough.”

“One person hovering over me day in and out is enough. And him doing so is only tolerated because I wouldn’t be without him.”

Nicky shook his head briefly and then let them settle into silence, letting Joe take whatever comfort he still obviously needed from his embrace and presence.

He’d thought that Joe would open up more about what it was he had dreamed and what was making his nightmares so bad and last as long as they had. It was easy to assume that Nile bringing Kozak up was the cause but Nicky knew Joe better than that. It was likely part of it but Joe had been too eager to steer the conversation in that direction and Nicky got the feeling his love had simply taken the most obvious route instead of the most honest one.

Considering Joe was generally a painfully honest person, it meant they weren’t likely to get a good night’s sleep for a while. It would go on like this until Joe stopped trying so hard to be okay for Andy and Nile’s sake and let himself be hurt and upset.

Maybe Nile would say something to Joe that would actually help him in doing that. She was proving to be incredibly intuitive and she had bonded quickly with Joe so she would want him to be truly okay and not forcing it. Nicky wondered if he could find a way to ease into the conversation without her catching on or without doing it in a way that would tip Joe off too early. He would figure it out because he knew Nicky so well but timing was everything.

For now he would just be there for his Joe. That’s what he could do and he was happy to do it.

He held Joe tighter, curling forward to press a kiss to the top of Joe’s head, taking in a deep breath of his love’s scent.

They shifted some to become more comfortable, but it did end up being one of the nights where Nicky slept facing away from the door. Though he knew Andy and Nile were just down the hall so they weren’t completely unguarded and he did manage to fall asleep again after Joe’s breathing relaxed enough to indicate he’d fallen asleep. He still woke up at least twice more from unpleasant dreams and Andy looked at Joe disapprovingly when she saw the tiredness in his eyes and movements the next day.

Nicky figured he’d be cornered by Andy before the day was out. She knew the look in Joe’s eyes when his exhaustion was because he wasn’t doing well just as she knew he would put himself aside for the sake of them.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading and I hope you liked it.


End file.
